Errors in Spiritual Investigation:

Meeting the Guardian of the Threshold

A Lecture By
Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, March 6, 1913
Bn 62; GA 62; CW 62

Pitfalls await those on the path of spiritual knowledge. Dr. Steiner's
poignant depiction of self-love can be especially helpful. This love
rises like a force of nature in one who follows a spiritual path. He
also explores the encounter with the double, the influences of Lucifer
and Ahriman, the role of fear, and the polar tendencies toward
phenomenology and mysticism.

A lecture given in Berlin, 6th March, 1913. Lecture 12 of 14 from the
volume:
Results of Spiritual Investigation
The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner
containing the original text of the this lecture, among eight others,
is entitled:
Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung,
(No. 62 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961).

Translated by persons unknown from Shorthand reports unrevised by the
Lecturer. Published by kind permission of the Rudolf
Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung in Dornach, Switzerland.

ERRORS IN
SPIRITUAL INVESTIGATION:Meeting the Guardian of the Threshold

A
lecture
by
Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, March 6, 1913

MERCURY PRESSSPRING VALLEY, NEW YORK 10977

ERRORS IN
SPIRITUAL INVESTIGATION:Meeting the Guardian of the Threshold

Just as it is of
great significance in every realm of human endeavor and investigation
to know not only the path of truth but also the sources of error, so
it is especially the case in the realm dealt with by our lectures
here, the realm of spiritual science, of spiritual investigation. In
this realm one has to do not only with sources of error that can be
eliminated to a certain extent through judgment and reasoning but
with sources of error that accompany every step of the spiritual
investigation of truth. One has to do with errors that must be not
only refuted but overcome, conquered. Only by knowing them in such a
way that one keeps, as it were, a spiritual eye on these experiences
in their character as error will it be possible to guard oneself
against them. It is not possible in relation to this realm to speak
of individual truths or errors, but it is necessary to be clear
through which activity of the soul, through which confusion of the
soul, man can fall into untruth on the path of spiritual
investigation.

It is easy to grasp that one wishing to penetrate to the
super-sensible world first needs a healthy organ of perception, just
as healthy sense organs are needed for outer sense observation. The
second thing one needs, in addition to the organ of perception, is a
corresponding development of clarity of consciousness, which can
clearly oversee and judge the observations. Even in ordinary sense
observation of life it is necessary that we have not only healthy
senses but also a healthy consciousness, that is, a consciousness not
befogged or confused, not paralyzed in a certain way. Both these
qualities of the soul life in a higher stage come to be of even
greater significance in the realm of spiritual investigation. A
comparison from ordinary sense observation will help us to understand
this. Suppose someone has an abnormally developed eye, for example.
He will not be in a position to observe objects in as accurate and
unprejudiced a way as they should be seen. From hundreds of possible
examples let us consider just this one. A very significant natural
scientist of our day, who is not in the least inclined to submit
willingly to any delusion, had a certain eye condition, and he
described in his biographical sketch how this eye condition misled
him, particularly at dusk, causing him to see things unclearly and,
through this unclear seeing, to arrive at false judgments. He
described, for example, how he often walked through darkness and, due
to his eye condition, would see a figure that he took to be real but
that was nothing other than something called forth by his abnormal
eye. He then related how he once went around the corner in a strange
city and, because he believed the city to be unsafe, his eye induced
him to see someone approaching and wishing to assault him; he even
pulled out a weapon to defend himself. He therefore was not in a
condition, despite complete knowledge of his organ impairment, to
judge the situation correctly, to recognize that what his eye called
forth was not there at all. Errors can occur in this way in all our
sense organs. I bring this up only as a
comparison.

In the recent lectures it was described how the human being,
through a certain inner cultivation, evolution, of his soul, can
develop into a real spiritual investigator, how he brings into use
real organs of spirit through which he can look into the
super-sensible world. These spiritual organs must be developed in the
right way to make it possible to behold — in an analogy with
sense perception — not caricature and untruth but the truth,
the reality, of higher spiritual worlds. As we have seen, this
development of the higher spiritual organs, which can be brought
about by a rightly applied concentration, contemplation, and
meditation, depends upon the starting point in ordinary, everyday
life. Every human being who wishes to evolve upward to a view of the
spiritual world must, and this is quite natural and proper, take his
starting point from ordinary soul development, from what is right and
normal for everyday life and also for ordinary science. Only from
this starting point, by taking into the soul those mental processes
(Vorstellungsarten) that we have presented as meditations and as
other exercises, can the soul ascend again to an observation of the
spiritual world.

The problem now is that at the starting point, that is,
before the beginning of a spiritual training, the future spiritual
investigator must be in possession of a sound power of judgment, a
capacity for judgment proceeding from true conditions. Every starting
point that does not result from a sound power of judgment, that
surrenders itself to the object, leads to unsound organs of spiritual
observation, which can be compared to abnormally developed sense
organs. Here we are again at the point that we have often mentioned
in previous lectures: the significance of what one can designate as
the soul life of the spiritual investigator before he begins his
development as a spiritual investigator, his training for spiritual
investigation. An unsound power of judgment, lacking ability to
observe objects in their reality, leads man to see facts and beings
of the spiritual world as distorted or, as we shall see today, in
many false ways. This is, as it were, the first important point in
all development toward spiritual investigation. Spiritual scientific
training makes it necessary to take as one's starting point a
sound power of judgment, an interest in the true relationships of
existence, even before the path to the super-sensible worlds is
embarked upon. Everything that readily surrenders itself to illusion
in the soul, that readily judges in an arbitrary way, that represents
in the soul a certain unsound logic, leads also to the development of
unsound spiritual organs.

The other starting point that is of essential significance is
the moral mood of soul. The moral ability, the moral force, is as
important as sound logic and intelligence, for if unsound logic, if
unsound intelligence, lead to faulty spiritual organs, so will a
cowardly (schwachmuetig) or immoral mood at the beginning of the
spiritual training lead one ascending into the spiritual world to a
certain fogginess, a “stupor”, we could call it. One thus
faces the higher world in a state of what one must designate as a
kind of paralysis, even a loss of consciousness (Ohnmacht). It must
be noted, however, that in the stage of soul development referred to
here, that which is called losing consciousness, a stupor, cannot be
compared with the loss of consciousness, the paralysis, of ordinary,
everyday consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, losing
consciousness occurs in relation to the areas of everyday life.
Losing consciousness in the spiritual world means a stupor, a
fogging; it means the saturation of consciousness with all that can
stem from the ordinary sense world or from the ordinary experience of
the day. The spiritual investigator who is in error cannot be
befogged or unconscious to the same degree as in ordinary
consciousness, but he can be unconscious in relation to the spiritual
world by being filled in the spiritual field of consciousness with
that which has justification only through its properties and way of
appearing in ordinary sense and intellectual
consciousness.

By taking such elements along into the spiritual world, the
spiritual investigator dims his higher consciousness. The matter can
be presented in the following way. Dimming of consciousness,
impairment of the ordinary behavior of soul in everyday life, is like
a penetration of sleep or of the dreams into the clear, everyday
consciousness. A stupor, a fogging of the higher, super-sensible
consciousness, however, is like a penetration of ordinary, everyday
consciousness — the consciousness that we carry around with us
in the ordinary world — into that consciousness in which it no
longer belongs, into the consciousness that should oversee and judge
the facts of the higher, super-sensible worlds purely and clearly. Any
kind of immoral or weak moral mood, any kind of moral untruthfulness,
leads to such a fogging of super-sensible consciousness. Among the
essential and most significant aspects of preparing for a spiritual
scientific training, therefore, is a corresponding moral development,
and, if you go through my book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment,
you will find special practices for the soul through
which this appropriate moral mood can be established. Of particular
damage in this striving is everything that overcomes man in ordinary
life in the way of vanity, ambition, the ordinary sense of self, and
a particular sympathy for this or that experience. Inner tranquility,
impartiality, a loving penetration of things and worlds, an attentive
interest in everything life offers, but especially a certain moral
courage, a standing up for what one recognizes as true, are proper
starting points for a spiritual scientific
training.

From what has been
said in preceding lectures, it should be clear that all spiritual
training consists of an awakening of certain spiritual forces that
exist in the soul but that slumber in ordinary life and must be
developed. The spiritual organs and the super-sensible consciousness
can be developed only when forces lying peacefully in the depths of
the soul, forces that are weak or not at all developed in ordinary
life, are really brought into consciousness.

The following can be seen from what has been said. Two things
appear when man, through appropriate meditation, through
concentrating his whole life of soul on individual mental
images called into consciousness by his free will, tries to draw
forth these forces resting in the depths of his soul. First, a
quality that is always present in the soul but that in ordinary life
can be kept relatively in check will be intensified, along with the
other slumbering qualities in the depths of the soul; spiritual
development cannot take place in any other way than by the whole soul
life becoming in a certain respect inwardly more active, more infused
with energy. This quality that is intensified at the same time as the
others that one is trying directly to intensify one can call human
self-love, sense of self. One could say that one begins to know this
human self-love, this sense of self, only when one goes through a
spiritual scientific training; only then does one begin to know how
deep within the human soul this self-love slumbers. As has been
pointed out already, he who engages in the exercises described in
past lectures, thus intensifying his soul forces, notices at a
certain moment in his development that another world enters his soul
life. He must be able to notice, to have the knowledge to recognize,
that the first form (Gestalt) in which the new, super-sensible world
appears is nothing other than a projection, a shadow image, of his
own inner soul life. These forces that he has developed in his soul
life appear to him first in a mirror image. This is the reason that
the materialistic thinker easily mistakes what appears in the soul
life of the spiritual investigator for what can appear in the
unhealthy soul life as illusions, visions, hallucinations, and the
like. That objections from this side rest on ignorance of the facts
has often been pointed out; this distinction, however, must be
alluded to again and again. The unhealthy soul life, which beholds
its own essence as in a mirror image, takes its own reflections for a
real world and is not in a position to eliminate these reflections
through inner choice. By comparison, in a true spiritual training it
must be maintained that the spiritual investigator recognizes the
first phenomena that appear as reflections of his own being; not only
does he recognize them as such, but he is able to eliminate them, to
extinguish them from his field of
consciousness.

Just as the spiritual investigator is able through his
exercises to intensify his soul forces so that a new world is
conjured before him, so he must be able to extinguish this whole
world in its first form; he must not only recognize it as a
reflection of his own being but be able to extinguish it again. If he
could not extinguish it, he would be in a situation comparable to
something that occurs in sense observation and that would be
unbearable, impossible in an actual development of the human soul.
Imagine in ordinary sense observation that a person directed his eyes
to an object and became so attracted to it that he could not avert
his gaze. The person would not be able to look around freely but
would be tied to the object. This would be an unbearable situation in
relation to the outer world. With a spiritual development, it would
mean exactly the same in relation to the super-sensible world if a
person were not in the position to turn from his spiritual
observation and extinguish what presents itself as image to his
spiritual observation. He must pass the test expressed in the words,
“You are able to extinguish your image,” overcoming
himself in this extinguishing; if the image returns, so that he can
know his reality in a corresponding way, then only does he face
reality and not his own imaginings (Einbildung). The spiritual
investigator therefore must be able not only to create his own
spiritual phenomena and to approach them but also to extinguish them
again.

What does this mean, however? It means nothing less than the
need for an immensely strong force to overcome the sense of self,
self-love. Why does the abnormal soul life, which arrives at visions,
hallucinations, and crazy notions, see these creations as realities
and not as emanations from its own being? Because the human being
feels himself so connected, so bound, to what he himself brings forth
that he would believe himself destroyed if he could not look at what
he himself brings forth as a reality. If a human being leaves the
ordinary world with an abnormal soul life, his self-love becomes so
intensified that it works like a force of nature. Within the ordinary
soul life we can distinguish very clearly between so-called fantasy
and what is reality, for within the ordinary soul life we have a
certain power over our mental images. Any person is aware of this
power whose soul has been capable of eliminating certain mental
images when it recognizes their error. We are in a different
situation in relation to the outer world when we are confronted with
forces of nature; when lightning flashes, when thunder rolls, we have
to let the phenomena take their course; we cannot tell the lightning
not to flash or the thunder not to roll.

With the same inner force, however, the sense of self appears
in us when we leave the ordinary soul life; as little as we can
forbid lightning to flash so little can we forbid self-love from
appearing, developed into a force of nature, if it is only a
reflection of one's own being, that which the soul presents as
an image of its own being, perceived as a real outer world. From this
one can see, therefore, that the self-education of the spiritual
investigator must consist chiefly of overcoming piece by piece
self-love, the sense of self. Only if this is accomplished at every
stage of spiritual development through a strict self-observation will
one come to be able at last to erase a spiritual world when it
appears as described. This means to be in the position of allowing
that which one has striven for with all one's might to fall
into oblivion. Something must be developed through spiritual training
(one can find this presented more precisely in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds)
that actually does not exist at all in man's
free will in ordinary life. If man in ordinary life undertakes to do
something, he wants to do it if he neglects to do something, he
doesn't want to do it. One must say that in ordinary life man
is in the position of applying his will impulses. To extinguish, in
the way I described, the spiritual world that appears, the will must
not only have the described faculties but must be able, after the
spiritual world appears, slowly to weaken itself bit by bit, to the
point of utter will-lessness, even to the point of extinguishing
itself. Such a cultivation of the will is accomplished only when the
exercises for the soul, described in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,
are followed systematically. When we awaken the slumbering
forces in our soul, self-love, the sense of self, are intensified.
This intensification leads us under certain circumstances to consider
as an outer reality that which we actually are ourselves, that which
lies only within us.

Another thing that is necessary when the soul undergoes
appropriate exercises for a spiritual training is for man, at a
certain level of this development, actually to forsake everything in
his consciousness, everything that in his life up to now gave him in
outer, everyday life and in ordinary science the content of truth,
security in truth, everything that gave him the possibility of
considering something as reality. As indicated already in previous
lectures, all supports that we have for our judgments in ordinary
life, all basic reference points given us by the sense world, which
teaches us how we must think about reality, must be forsaken. After
all, we want through the spiritual training to enter a higher world.
The spiritual investigator at an appropriate stage of his development
now sees, “You can no longer have a support in the world that
you want to enter; you can no longer have the support of outer sense
perception, of the intellectual judgment you have acquired, which
otherwise guided you correctly through life”; when he has seen
this, then comes the all-important, serious moment in the life of the
spiritual investigator when he feels as if the ground is gone from
under his feet, as if the support that he has had in ordinary life is
gone, as if all security that has carried him up to now is gone and
that he approaches an abyss into which with every further step he
will surely fall. This must in a certain way become an experience in
the spiritual training. That this experience not be accompanied by
every possible danger is the primary concern of a true spiritual
training today.

An attempt has been made to explain this more fully in the book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
If one undergoes the exercises
offered there, one comes step by step to a point at which one feels
what has just been described; one feels oneself as if over an abyss.
One has already become so tranquil in one's soul, however, that
one beholds the situation with a newly acquired, special faculty of
judgment; therefore the fear, terror, and horror that otherwise needs
must overtake the human soul in a dangerous way — not an
ordinary, everyday fear — do not appear. One learns to know the
basis of the fear, terror, and horror, but one has already progressed
so as to achieve a mood in which one can endure it without
fear.

Here we are again
at a point at which it becomes necessary for the soul to recognize
the truth and not fall into error, because the support that one has
in ordinary life has disappeared, and the soul feels itself as if
placed over an abyss. This must occur in order that, out of the
emptiness, that which is fully spiritual in the world can approach
the soul.

What in ordinary
life is called anxiety, fear, will be intensified through such a
training, expanded, just as self-love and the sense of self are
intensified and expanded, growing into a kind of force of nature.
Something must be said here that perhaps sounds paradoxical. In
ordinary life if we have not struggled through to a certain courage,
if we are cowards, we are frightened by this or that event if we have
courage, however, we can endure it. In the region of the soul life we
have described, fear, terror, and horror will approach us, but we
must be in the position, as it were, not to be afraid of the fear,
not to be horrified by the horror, not to become anxious with the
anxiety that confronts us. This is the paradox, but it corresponds
exactly with an actual soul experience that appears in this
realm.

Everything that the human being experiences on entering the
spiritual world is designated ordinarily as the experience with the
Guardian of the Threshold. I tried to describe something concrete
about this experience in my Mystery Drama,
The Guardian of the Threshold.
Here it only need be mentioned that at a certain stage of
spiritual development, man learns to know his inner being as it can
love itself with the force of an event of nature, as it can be
frightened and horrified on entering the spiritual world. This
experience of our own self, of the intensified self of that inner
being that otherwise never would come before our soul, is the
soul-shaking event called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold.
Only by having this meeting will one acquire the faculty to
differentiate truth from error in the spiritual
world.

Why this
experience is called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold
is easily comprehensible. It is clear that the spiritual world that
man enters is always around us and that man is unaware of it in
ordinary life only because he does not have the appropriate organs to
perceive it. The spiritual world surrounds us always and is always
behind that which the senses perceive. Before man can enter this
world, however, he must strengthen his ego, his I. With the
strengthening of the ego, however, the aforementioned qualities also
appear. He therefore must learn above all else to know himself, so
that when he is able to confront a spiritual outer world in the same
way as he confronts an objective being he can distinguish himself
from what is truth. If he does not learn to delimit himself in this
way, he will always confuse that which is only within him, that which
is only his subjective experience, with the spiritual world picture;
he can never arrive at a real grasp of spiritual
reality.

To what extent fear plays a certain role on entering the
spiritual world can be observed particularly in the people who deny
the existence of such a world. Among such people are also many who
have different reasons for denying this spiritual world, but a great
portion of those people who are theoretical materialists or
materialistically tinged monists have a definite reason for denying
this spiritual world, a reason that is clearly visible for one who
knows the soul. We must now emphasize that the soul life of the human
being is, as it were, twofold. In the soul not only does there exist
what man ordinarily knows, but in the depths of the soul life things
are happening that cast their shadows — or their lights —
into ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness, however, does
not reach down to this level. We can find in the hidden depths of
soul hatred and love, joy and fear and excitement, without our
carrying these effects into conscious soul life. It is therefore
entirely correct to say that a phenomenon of hatred directed from one
person to another, taking place within consciousness, actually can be
rooted, in the depths of soul, in love. There can be a sympathy, a
deep sympathy, of one person for another in the depths of the soul,
but since this person at the same time has reasons — reasons
about which he perhaps knows nothing — he is confused about
this love, about the sympathy, deceiving himself with hatred and
antipathy. This is something that holds sway in the depths of the
soul, so that these depths look quite different from what we call our
everyday consciousness. There can be conditions of fear, of anxiety,
in the depths of the soul of which one has no conscious idea. Man can
have that fear in the depths of his soul, that anxiety in face of the
spiritual world — because he must cross the abyss that has been
described before entering — and yet be aware of nothing
consciously. Actually, all human beings who have not yet entered the
spiritual world, but who have acquired an understanding of entering,
have to a degree this fear, this terror in face of the spiritual
world. Whatever one may think concerning this fear and anxiety that
are within the depths of the soul, they are there, though they appear
stronger with one person, weaker with another. Because the soul might
be injured, man is protected by the wisdom-filled nature of his being
from being able to look further into the spiritual world, from being
able to have the experience of meeting the Guardian of the Threshold
until he is ready for it. Before that he is protected. Therefore one
speaks of the experience of the Guardian of the Threshold.

We can note that a materialistically or monistically minded
person, although knowing nothing of this experience, does have this
fear in face of the spiritual world in the depths of his soul. There
lives in such a person a certain antipathy to confronting the abyss
that must be crossed; and to help him get past this fear, this
anxiety in the soul in face of the spiritual world, the monist or
materialist thinks out his theories and denies the spiritual world;
this denial is nothing other than a self-induced anesthesia in face
of his fear. This is the real explanation for materialism. As
unsympathetic as it may sound, for one who knows the soul it is
evident that in a meeting of materialistic monists, or those who deny
soul and spirit, there prevails only the fear in the face of the
spiritual world. One could say mockingly that fear-mongering is the
basis of materialism, and although it is mocking it is nevertheless
true. In materialistic literature, in the materialistic world
conception, the spiritual investigator recognizes everywhere between
the lines fear and anxiety in face of the spiritual world. What in
ordinary life appears as materialism, however, as the soul condition
present when a person is a materialist or a materialistically tinged
monist, can also be present when a person arrives through definite
measures at a certain spiritual vision. One can go through certain
exercises in the soul and develop thereby from a more-or-less
unhealthy soul condition to a more-or-less spiritual comprehension,
yet one need not come by this means to a real understanding of the
nature of the spiritual world. In a certain way one can carry up into
the spiritual something of this fear about which one knows nothing,
which has already been characterized and which underlies the
materialistically minded person in the ordinary
world.

If one does not
grasp this connection, one can carry up into the spiritual world
something that is terribly widespread in ordinary life: the love of
ease of thinking, the love of ease of feeling. Fear is closely akin
to love of ease, to clinging to habit. Why is man afraid of changing
his situation? Because he loves his ease and comfort. This love of
ease is closely related to fear. We have already described the basis
for hatred; in the same way one can also say that lassitude, love of
ease, are closely related to fear. One can, however, carry this love
of ease up into the spiritual world. No one ought to object that
human beings show no evidence of fear or love of ease, for this is
again characteristic; it is characteristic that the ordinary mood of
soul knows nothing of these things rooted in the subconscious. If man
carries fear into the spiritual world, already having developed to
the point of acknowledging the spiritual world, then an error arises
in a spiritual region, an error that is extraordinarily important to
consider the leaning toward phenomenalism.

People who become subject to this leaning become, rather than
spiritual investigators, “specterseers” (to express it
crassly), those who see ghosts (Gespensterschauer); they become
possessed by a leaning toward phenomenalism. This means that they
want to see the spiritual world in the same way as the sense world is
to be seen; they do not want to perceive spiritual facts, spiritual
beings, but something similar to the beings that the sensory eye can
behold. In short, instead of spirits they want to behold specters,
ghosts. The error of spiritualism (this is not to say that all
spiritualism is unjustified) consists of this leaning toward
phenomenalism. Just as the ordinary, everyday materialist wants to
see only matter everywhere and not the spirit behind matter, so does
he who brings to the spiritual world the same soul condition that
actually exists in materialism want to see everywhere only ghostlike,
condensed spirits.

This is one dangerous extreme of error that can emerge. One
must say that this tendency to carry the ordinary field of
consciousness up into the super-sensible field of consciousness exists
in the widest circles, even among those who fully recognize a
“spiritual world” and want “proof” of a
spiritual world. The error here, however, lies in considering a proof
valid only if it takes place in the realm of phenomenalism; it lies
in considering that everything should be like condensed ghosts. Here
something arises that was called in the beginning of our study a
stupor, losing consciousness in relation to the spiritual
world. While losing consciousness in ordinary life is the
penetration of a sleeping or dreaming condition into consciousness,
losing consciousness regarding the spiritual world means
wanting to give worth only to that which appears in the same way as
things in the ordinary world, so that one is unconscious in relation
to the spiritual world; it is demanded that proof be supplied that
can be taken in the way appropriate only in the ordinary world. Just
as one brings sleep into the ordinary world if one falls unconscious,
so one falls unconscious in relation to the beings and processes of
the spiritual world if one takes into the super-sensible world that
which is only an extract of sense reality (das Sinnliche). The true
spiritual investigator also knows those realms of the spiritual world
that condense into the ghostlike, but he knows that everything
arriving at such a condensation is merely the dying, the withering in
the spiritual world. When, for example, with the help of a medium,
something is brought to life as the thoughts of a deceased person, we
are confronted only with what remains behind, as it were, of the
deceased. We are not dealing with that which goes through the portal
of death, which passes through the spiritual world and appears again
in a new earthly life. We are concerned in such a case not with what
is present in the individuality of the dead person but with the
sheath that is cast off, the wooden part of the tree, or the shell of
a shellfish, or the skin of the snake that is cast off. In the same
way, such sheaths, such useless remnants, are continuously being cast
off from the being of the spiritual world and then, by way of a
medium, they can be made perceptible — although as visible
unreality. The spiritual investigator knows, to be sure, that he is
not confronting an unreality. He does not surrender himself to the
error, however, that in encountering the described phenomenon he is
confronted with something fertile, with something sprouting and
budding; rather he knows it as something dying, withering. At the
same time it must be emphasized that in the sense world, when one
confronts error, one is dealing with something that must be ignored,
that must be eliminated as soon as it is recognized as error, whereas
in the spiritual world one cannot cope with error in the same way.
There, an error corresponds to the dying, the withering, and the
error consists of mistaking the dying and withering in the spiritual
world for something fruitful or full of significance. Even in the
life of the ordinary human being, error is something one casts off;
in the spiritual world error arises when the dead, the dying, is
taken for something fruitful, sprouting; one mistakes the dead
remnants that have been cast off for
immortality.

How deeply the best individuals of our time have been
entangled in this kind of phenomenalism, considering only such proof
as valid, we can see in an individual who wrote so many excellent
things about the world and now has written a book about these
phenomena, about these different phenomena of spiritual
investigation. I am referring to Maurice Maeterlinck and his book,
About Death.
We read there that he acknowledges a spiritual world but
as proof acknowledges only what appears in phenomenalism. He does not
notice that he tries to find in phenomenalism that which can never be
found in phenomenalism. Then he criticizes the
“phenomena” very acutely, very effectively. He does
notice, however, that all this actually has no particular meaning and
that the human soul after death does not exhibit a very intense
vitality, that it behaves rather awkwardly, as though groping in the
dark. Since he wants to admit only this kind of proof, he generally
does not acknowledge spiritual investigation but remains
stuck.

We see how the possibility of error opens itself to someone
who would gladly recognize the spiritual world but is unable to do
so, because he does not demand spiritual investigation but rather
“specter investigation” and does not make use of what
reality can give. His newest book is extraordinarily interesting from
this point of view.

In the leaning toward phenomenalism we thus have the one
extreme among the possibilities for error in spiritual investigation.
The other extreme among the possibilities for error is ecstasy, and
between phenomenalism and ecstasy, in knowing both, lies the truth,
or at least truth can be reached if one knows both. The path of
error, however, lies as much on the side of phenomenalism as on the
side of ecstasy. We have seen what soul condition leads into the wish
to acknowledge only phenomenalism. It is fear, horror, which man does
not admit, which he tries to conceal. Because he is afraid to abandon
all sense reality and to make the leap over the abyss, he accepts
sense reality, demands the specters, and arrives thereby only at the
dying, at that which destroys itself: This is one source of error.
The other force of the soul, intensified through the exercises often
described here is self-love, sense of self; self-love has as its
polarity — one would like to say — the “getting out
of oneself.” This “enjoying oneself in oneself”
(pardon the expression; it is a radical choice but points exactly to
what we are concerned with here) is only one side; the other side
consists of “losing oneself in the world,” the surrender
and dissolving and self-enjoyment in the other and the corresponding
intensification of this self-seeking coming-out-of-one's self
is ecstasy in its extreme. It is the cause of a condition in which
man in a certain respect can say to himself that he has gotten free
of himself. He has become free of himself, however, only by feeling
the comfort of his own self in the being outside himself. If the one
who knows the soul looks at the evolution of mysticism in the world,
he finds that a large part of mysticism consists of the phenomena
just characterized. As great, as powerful in soul experiences, as
deep and significant as mysticism can be, the possibilities of error
in ecstasy are actually rooted in a false cultivation of the mystical
faculty of the human being. When man strives always to enter more and
more into himself, when he strives through this for what is called
the deepening of his soul life, strives, as he says, to find
“God in himself” this God that man finds in his inner being
is usually nothing other than his own I or ego made into God. With many
mystics we find, when they speak of the “God within,”
nothing other than the God imprinted with their own egos. Mystical
immersion in God is at times nothing but immersing oneself into
one's own dear ego, especially into the parts of the ego into
which one does not penetrate with full consciousness, so that one
surrenders one's self, loses one's self, comes out of
one's self, and yet remains only within one's self. Much
that confronts us as mysticism shows that with false mystics love of
God is often only disguised self-love.

The real spiritual investigator must guard himself on the one
hand against carrying the outer sense world into the higher world; he
must guard on the other hand against the opposite extreme, against
false mysticism, the coming-out-of-oneself. He must never confuse
“love for the spiritual being of the world” with
self-love. In the moment that he confuses these, the following
occurs, as the true spiritual investigator, who has developed himself
correctly, can verify. Just as one who is compelled by phenomenalism
beholds only the remnants, the dying of the spiritual world, so he
who surrenders himself to the other extreme sees only individual
parts of the spiritual world, not spiritual facts and beings. In the
spiritual world he does not do what one who contemplates the flowers
in a meadow does; rather, he does what the one does who takes what
grows in the field, chops it up and eats it. This comparison is
peculiar but absolutely to the point. Through ecstasy the spiritual
facts are not grasped in their wholeness, their totality, but only in
that which pleases and benefits one's own soul, that which the
soul can consume spiritually. It is actually a consumption of
spiritual substance that is cultivated in the human being through
ecstasy. Just as little as one learns to know things of this sense
world by eating them, so little does one learn to know the forces and
beings of the spiritual world through giving oneself to ecstasy in
order to warm one's own self with what feels good. One thereby
comes to a definite knowledge only of one's own self in
relation to the spiritual world. One lives only in a heightened sense
of self, a heightened self-love, and because one takes in from the
spiritual world only that which can be consumed spiritually, which
can be eaten spiritually, one deprives oneself of that which cannot
be handled in this way, of that which stands apart from the
nourishment gained through ecstasy. What one deprives oneself of,
however, is by far the greatest part of the spiritual world, and the
mystic who clings to ecstasy is deprived more and more. We find with
mystics who ascend to the spiritual world through ecstasy that it is
exactly as if they were always indulging themselves through repeating
feelings and sensations. Many presentations of such mystics appear
not as objective presentations of the conditions of the spiritual
world but as though the one who gives the presentation were indulging
in what he presents. Many mystics are actually nothing but spiritual
gourmets, and the rest of the spiritual world, which does not taste
good to them, does not even exist for them.

We see again how concepts change when we ascend from the
ordinary world into the higher world. If in the ordinary world we
occupy ourselves only with our own concepts, we become poorer and
poorer, our logic becomes ever poorer. Finally we find that we can no
longer find our orientation, and anyone who knows the facts can set
us straight. In the ordinary world we correct this meagerness
by widening our concepts. In the spiritual world, that which
corresponds to ecstasy leads to something else. By taking into us
realities, and not something unreal — but taking in only
isolated parts, after picking out what suits us — we receive a
view of the spiritual world that is only suited to ourselves. We
carry ourselves into the spiritual world just as in the other
extreme, in phenomenalism, we carry the sense world into the
spiritual world. It can always be shown in the case of one who
arrives at a false picture of the world through ecstasy that he began
from an unsound force of judgment, from an incomplete factual
logic.

We thus see how the spiritual investigator always must avoid
the two extremes that bring him to every possible source of error:
phenomenalism on the one hand and ecstasy on the other. In order to
avoid the sources of error, nothing will be more helpful than for the
spiritual investigator to cultivate one particular mood of soul,
through which he is in a position, when he places himself in the
spiritual world, to exist in the spiritual world, to be able to
observe calmly in that world. One cannot always remain in the
spiritual world, however, so long as one is in the physical body; one
must also live with the physical world; therefore this mood of soul
that the spiritual investigator must cultivate allows him in the
physical world to strive as much as possible to grasp the facts of
life with common sense, without sentimentality and untruthfulness. It
is necessary for the spiritual investigator, to a much higher degree
than is ordinarily the case, to have a healthy sense for facts, a
genuine feeling for truthfulness. All fanaticism, all inaccuracy,
which make it so easy to skirt what is really there, are harmful for
the spiritual investigator. One can see already in ordinary life, and
it becomes clear immediately in the realm of spiritual training, that
lie who lets himself indulge only the least bit in inaccuracy will
notice that it is only a tiny step from inaccuracy to lies and
untruthfulness. The spiritual investigator, therefore, must strive to
feel himself obliged to hold firmly to the truth, to mix nothing with
the unconditional truth that exists in ordinary life, for in the
spiritual world such a mixing leads from error to error. In those
circles wishing to have anything to do with spiritual investigation,
the justified opinion should be spread that an outer, distinguishing
characteristic of the true spiritual investigator must be his
truthfulness; the moment the spiritual investigator demonstrates that
he feels little obligation to test what he says, speaking rather of
things he cannot know about the physical world, he becomes flawed as
a spiritual investigator and no longer can merit a full trust. This is
connected with the conditions for spiritual investigation
itself.

It must be brought to our attention again and again that,
when the realms of spiritual investigation and spiritual science are
spoken of today, it is unjustified to claim that only the spiritual
investigator can see into the spiritual world and that one who is not
yet a spiritual investigator is unable to know and understand and
grasp it. You can learn from the descriptions in my book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,
and from my presentation in
An Outline of Occult Science
that in our era to a certain degree every person, if only he
makes the necessary effort, can become a spiritual investigator, no
matter what his position in life is otherwise. Nevertheless, it is
also possible for a person to understand the descriptions of the
spiritual world without being a spiritual investigator. It is
necessary to be a spiritual investigator not in order to understand
the communications from the spiritual world but in order to discover
them, to investigate what is present in the spiritual world. One must
be a painter in order to paint a picture, but one need not be a
painter to understand a picture; it is the same with understanding
communications from the spiritual world with the sound human
intellect. It is in order to investigate the spiritual world that the
human being is endowed with the higher organs of observation. If what
is investigated, however, is brought into the concepts of the
ordinary world, as is often attempted here, the sound human intellect
can, if only it is sufficiently unprejudiced and does not create
obstructions for itself, grasp what is brought to light through
spiritual investigation.

One could say that with spiritual investigation it is the
same as it is with what grows under the earth and is found only when
one digs into the earth like a miner. Whatever one finds there can
originate only as it exists within the earth, developing in those
layers of the earth that are covered by layers above it. What is in
the depths of the earth cannot develop on the surface of the earth,
which is illuminated by the sun during the day. If we then make an
opening in the earth, however, and let the sunlight shine in,
illuminating what is underneath, everything can appear in the light
of the sun. It is the same with what can be gained through spiritual
scientific investigation: it can be brought to light only if the soul
has transformed itself into an organ of perception for the spiritual
world. If it is brought into the concepts and mental images of
ordinary life, however, then the human intellect, if only it is
sufficiently sound, can understand and illuminate everything as if
with spiritual sunlight. All of spiritual science, therefore, can be
grasped by the sound human intellect. Just as a painting is not made
merely for the painter himself, so the communications about the
spiritual world are not only for the spiritual scientific
investigator. Nevertheless, paintings are able to originate only
through the painter, and the spiritual world can be explored only by
the spiritual investigator.

He who believes that what comes from the communications of
the spiritual investigator cannot be grasped by means of the ordinary
intellect does not perceive at all correctly the nature and essence
of the human capacity for thinking. In the human capacity for
thinking reside faculties that stand in direct connection with the
nature of the higher world. Because man is accustomed to approach
only the ordinary sense objects with his concepts, he believes that
the ordinary faculty of judgment vanishes in him if super-sensible
facts are presented to him. He who develops his capacity for
thinking, however, can cultivate this capacity in such a way that it
can grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation.
One must not have some notion beforehand, however, of how one can
grasp such matters. This should result from the study itself. If one
has a definite notion of how one should grasp these things, one
surrenders oneself again to a serious error in relation to spiritual
investigation. This is the second aspect that is especially
noticeable in Maurice Maeterlinck's new book. He is an
individual who wishes to direct his gaze to the spiritual world, who
has made some fine observations about various things, and who has
also tried to present the mysteries of the spiritual world
dramatically; it is especially telling that this individual, in the
moment in which he should approach the real science of the spirit,
proves himself so inadequate. He demands a certain kind of
understanding — not the kind given by the things
themselves but the kind he imagines (ertraeumt), which he believes
must appear to provide verification. In this way the greatest
peculiarity arises: Maeterlinck takes to be merely a belief that
which anthroposophy or spiritual science has to say when it speaks
today about “repeated earthly lives” — when it
speaks with a certain outer justification (not with a merely inner
conviction, which would be akin to a certain primitive belief of
humanity). He calls it a belief, because he cannot perceive that what
we are concerned with here does not have to do with belief but with
knowledge. He thus finds that the existence of that which develops
further in man, moving from life to life, cannot be proved, because
he has a definite idea of what constitutes proof. Maeterlinck can be
compared in this realm to certain other people. Until recently, there
existed a kind of belief, a certain mathematical-geometrical belief
that is summarized in the words, the “squaring of the
circle”; that is, one would seek by means of a
mathematical-analytical, constructive thinking for that square
which equaled the
area or the circumference of the circle. This task of transforming
the circle into a square was an ideal, as it were, toward which one
always strove: the transforming of the circle into a square. Now, no
one doubted that there could be a square exactly as large as a
circle. In reality, of course, it is entirely possible for such a
thing to exist, but it is impossible to show with mathematical
constructions or with analytical methods just what the diameter of a
circle would have to be to equal a particular square. This means that
mathematical thinking does not suffice to prove something that is
real, that is physical. There have been countless people who have
worked on the solution of squaring the circle, until recent
mathematicians proved that it is impossible to solve the problem in
this way. Today anyone still trying to solve the problem of squaring
the circle is considered not to know mathematics in this realm.
Maeterlinck is equivalent to those people trying to square the circle
in regard to what he is trying to prove. One can understand the
spiritual world, can grasp that what is brought to light through
spiritual investigation is real; one cannot prove the existence of
this spiritual world, however, if one demands out of prejudice a
particular kind of proof; one can prove it in this way as little as
one can prove the squaring of a circle mathematically.

One would have to reply to Maeterlinck, therefore, that he
tries to square the circle in the spiritual realm, or he would have
to be shown how the concepts by which he would like to prove the
existence of the spiritual world disappear when man passes through
the portal of death. How is one supposed to prove the existence of
the spiritual world with concepts such as those taken from the sense
world? This, however, is what Maeterlinck is trying to do, and it is
extraordinarily interesting that when he gives in to his healthy
feeling, he has no choice but to acknowledge repeated lives on earth.
It is very interesting how he expresses himself about a knowledge
that he calls a belief, and I would like to read to you his own
words: ‘Never was there a belief more beautiful, more just,
more pure, more morally fruitful, more comforting, and in a certain
sense more probable than this. With its teaching of gradual
redemption and purification of all bodily and spiritual inequities,
of all social injustice, all terrible’ injustices of destiny,
it alone gives meaning to life. The goodness of a belief, however, is
no proof of its truthfulness. Although six hundred million human
beings devote themselves to this religion, although it is closest to
the origins that are shrouded in darkness, although it is the only
one without hatred, it should have done what the others have not
done: bring us indisputable evidence. What it has given us up to now
is only the first shadow of the beginning of a proof.” In other
words, Maeterlinck is trying in this realm to square the circle.

We see especially clearly in this example how someone who can
think that the benefit of spiritual science lies only in an extreme,
in phenomenalism (all his writings show this), is totally unable to
keep in view the significance and the real nature of spiritual
scientific investigation. From such an example as Maeterlinck,
we can learn a lot, namely that truth, which must be introduced into
the world evolution of humanity, is really, when it first appears, in
the position once characterized by Schopenhauer with the words,
“In all centuries poor truth had to blush over being
paradoxical.” To Maeterlinck, truth appears not just
paradoxical but unbelievable, yet it is not the fault of truth. Truth
cannot take on the form of the universally reigning error. Thus she
looks sighing to her patron god, Time, which promises her victory and
glory, but whose vast wings beat so slowly that she dies in the
meantime. So it goes with the course of the spiritual evolution of
humanity. It is most interesting and instructive that the best
individuals today, those human beings who long to have their soul
life connected with a spiritual world, are not capable of grasping
the core of the actual science of the spirit. Instead, where it
involves distinguishing the true path from the two possibilities for
error, they stumble, because they do not dare leap over the abyss;
they wish either to make use of their dependence on the ordinary
world, in phenomenalism, or, if they do not do this, they seek an
intensification of the sense of self in ecstasy. We cannot concern
ourselves only with recognizing the character of the separate
possibilities for error; we must concern ourselves with that which
humanity must avoid if one is to recognize and close up the source of
spiritual scientific error. From the way in which today's study
has been undertaken, one conclusion can be drawn: spiritual
investigation must know the sources of error. The temptation is
always present in the soul to err in the direction of phenomenalism,
and therefore to stand as though spiritually unconscious in relation
to the spiritual world, or to err in the direction of ecstasy, which
means wanting to enter the spiritual world with inadequate organs of
spirit and thus receiving only isolated pieces and not related
facts.

The path goes between the two extremes. One must know the
possibilities for error. Because they can appear with every step in
spiritual life one must not only know them but overcome them. The
revelations of spiritual investigation are not only results of
investigation but also victories over error, victory by means
of a way of looking that has been gained previously, victory over the
sense of self and more. He who penetrates more deeply into what we
have tried to describe only sketchily today will become aware that
— even if everywhere where we embark on the investigation of
spiritual life the possibilities for error can lurk frighteningly
— we nevertheless must conquer error again and again. He will
become aware that spiritual investigation not only satisfies an
indomitable yearning for that which man needs for certainty in his
life but that its goal must appear, to one who regards this movement
with comprehension, as attainable to a sound human sense. To conclude
what today's lecture was to offer on the level of feeling, I
would like to say that in spite of all obstacles, in spite of all
things that can stand in a hostile way on the path of spiritual
investigation, those who penetrate with a sound sense into the
results of spiritual scientific. investigation feel and sense that
these results penetrate — through difficult hindrances of soul,
through bewildering darknesses of spirit — to a solemn clarity,
to a luminous truth.